Thursday, July 23, 2009

Pre-marital counseling

I decided to go ahead and check another item of my to-do list yesterday and finally emailed our officiant for the wedding about what requirements/pre-marital counseling we need in order for him to perform the ceremony.

Since we aren't getting married inside a church and since neither Kristian nor I attend church on any kind of regular basis we decided to use my mom's boss as our officiant. My mom is the office manager for a small Methodist church up in Maryland and her boss is the main pastor. I've met him briefly in the past when he came to my grandmother's wake and from the stories my mom tells he seems like a good guy and I think he'll do a really good job. I was also relieved that he was willing to travel down to VA to do this since it's not something he usually does. Plus it will require him to get a VA license to perform marriage ceremonies so we really do appreciate him going out of his way.

He responded back to me today and said that we would need to fill out an "inventory" of our relationship, aka take a compatibility test, so that he can see what areas we need to really address in our meetings. My mom did mention this to me before and says that most couples do well. However there was one couple that scored very low and they ultimately ended up not getting married! Pastor Steve said that there are usually 3-4 sessions involved after we take the inventory so we have plenty of time.

I'm actually pretty excited about this, Kristian and I have obviously already discussed all the big marriage issues i.e. finances, kids, religion etc. but I'm sure there are many things we're missing and talking with someone who works with couples on a regular basis can only benefit our relationship. I've always been very pro pre-martial counseling, I think regardless of how long a couple has been together everyone can benefit from some form of doing this, even non-religious couples which is what I consider us to be. I just hope we score well on our "relationship inventory" I already asked my mom is she could steal us a copy of the test but it's probably a bad karma to cheat on a test given by one of God's workers.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Ha ha! I can imagine you trying to snag a copy of the answers. Hilarious!

Alicia said...

hahaaa!! i ditto klaw!! that would be awesome!! you have to let us know what he asks...now i'm all curious!

The Reverend said...

I agree on the whole pre-marital counseling thing. What happens, though, if you dont score well on the test? Does the minister say, "I dont think you all should get married." There has to be something said if the couple has been together for years with no real issues. Just a curious question of mine. The gf and I have talked a little about getting married one of these years and that is REQUIRED in the Catholic Church... we quasi-jokingly have said how different we are from one another so its something I was thinking about, haha. Anywho, congrats on everything and keep us posted!